New Photoshop freezing issue with Wacom - help! Windows 10

[germ732]

I use Photoshop nearly every day and this problem just started for me yesterday. When painting in PS with my tablet (Wacom Intuos Pro) the cursor is constantly freezing for 5-10 seconds. I can paint a continuous stroke for as long as I want, including varying the weight with pressure sensitivity. But once I release and am just moving around the canvas it will start freezing, almost constantly. I'm a professional retoucher and need to rapidly paint in small subtle strokes, so this is making it impossible for me to do my work. I have been trying to resolve this for the last 24 hours and have tried every solution I could find online. I'm already extremely familiar with the issues with Windows Ink and the PSUserConfig.txt workaround.

Here are my system specs:

Intel i7-6800k @ 3.4 GHz

Nvidia 2080 Super graphics card

64 Gigs of ram, with 45 allocated to PS (75%)

Windows 10 home 1903 (installed 8/23/2019)

Wacom Driver 6.3.38-2

The issue persists even with a tiny document with only 1 layer and a small round brush, so it isn't like I'm pushing my resources too hard.

Things I have already tried:

1. Disabling Windows Ink for PS. Disabling Windows Ink for everything. Installing the PSUserConfig.txt file in every version of PS. Removing the config file and enabling Windows Ink, which surprisingly seemed to work ok now, but the freezing issue persisted. Currently back to the workaround, with Ink disabled.

2. Uninstalling Wacom drivers, software and all preferences (including deleting the Wacom prefs from the Wacom Tablet Preferences File Utility), then reinstalling an earlier version (which had worked fine). When this didn't help I updated to the most recent version.

3. Uninstalling PS 2020 and uninstalling then reinstalling 2019. I did update the workaround again after all of this.

4. Changing my scratch disk from a dedicated SSD to my nvme C: drive. Disabling the graphics card. Lowering the number or history states. Lowering my cache levels to 4.

I switched from Mac to Windows several years ago and have had a lot of issues with the Wacom drivers, but have always managed to fix it, until this time. The other thing I'm confused about is that nothing changed on my machine in the past week, but now Photoshop is unusable.

I urgently need to resolve this so any help is appreciated, but please don't link to old videos about the Windows Ink fix, because that isn't the problem this time.

Thanks!

{Thread renamed by moderator}

[Sahil.Chawla]

Hi there,

Sorry to hear about Photoshop freezing with wacom tablet, as you've already tried multiple troubleshooting steps, could you please try completely removing Photoshop using the Creative Cloud Cleaner Tool and install it again via the Creative Cloud Desktop application? https://helpx.adobe.com/in/creative-cloud/kb/cc-cleaner-tool-installation-problems.html

Regards,
Sahil

[germ732]

Hi Sahil,

I went through the process you recommended. Weirdly, after reinstalling PS 2020 it seems to have improved very slightly, but the problem is not resolved. My cursor appears to be freezing somewhat less often now, but it is still freezing every 15-20 seconds and when it does it stays frozen for about as long as before.

[Sahil.Chawla]

That is good to know that it is somewhat performing better now, could you please try deselecting "Use Graphics Processor" located in Photoshop's Preferences > Performance, then relaunch Photoshop and let us know if it helps?

[germ732]

If anything that made the problem worse. I had tried that before as noted in my original comment, but I tried it again and restarted and it doesn't help at all. It definitely has something to do with the tablet, as I can't reproduce the problem with the mouse. But I've tried all the normal tablet fixes and none of them are working.

[germ732]

Just an update in case others have the same problem. I researched more and tried 2 more things, one of them (or their combination) seems to have worked.

1. I shut down and then unplugged my machine for several minutes, to fully reset the USB bus and ports which were acting strangely. 

2. In the Nvidia control panel under 3d settings for PS, I changed power management mode to "Prefer Maximum Performance" so it would always use the graphics card. My cpu doesn't have onboard graphics so I don't know if that changes anything, but it's working so I'm leaving it for now.

In any case the problem seems resolved. Thanks again!